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Ask Slashdot: Radiation Detection For Tokyo Resident?
An anonymous reader writes "I'm an American who is living in Tokyo. Stories have started popping up about 'radiation hot spots' in Tokyo and surrounding prefectures so I have begun to worry. I live on the first floor of my apartment building and right by our washing machine there is a gutter out there that is clogged with rain water and mud, which has me especially worried because my wife and I are planning to have kids soon. Obviously no one from the government is going to come by to check our gutter so I feel the need to take matters into my own hands. I have absolutely no idea so I'm asking you guys. What kind of radiation detector should I get? A Geiger Counter? If it measures Gamma rays is that enough? Are alpha and beta dangerous too? I know no one has all the answers regarding radiation but any advice you guys could give me would be great."
Ask Slashdot anything you want! No need for prior research or common sense.
Even the Setagaya hotspot, caused by a forgotten stash of highly radioactive radium, which was orders of magnitude worse than anything else found in Tokyo, was nowhere near the point where it would have posed any danger to the people in the vicinity.
This is just not something which is worth worrying about, much less spending money on. Save your money for the thing your kid actually needs.
I do not have any information about place where you could borrow one, so I am unable to give any advice on that. What I said was, specifically, "Save your money".
I only just found out about the 57 microSv/h hotspot. That is indeed very interesting, but it is extremely unlikely to have anything to do with Fukushima, and sounds more like buried illegal radioactive waste, or maybe another forgotten stash of radioactive material that got buried by chance. That is something that could be found pretty much anywhere, and if you wouldn't worry about that living anywhere else, you shouldn't worry about it when living in Tokyo. The chances of encountering such a thing are quite minuscule.
Now, having citizens equipped with radiation monitors moving around measuring radiation is actually a very good idea, for exactly this reason: There is a lot of forgotten radioactive material around the world that it would be good to find, and lots of people moving doing lots of measurements helps with that. We saw this already with the Setagaya hotspot. However, this doesn't seem to be what the person asking the question is interested in. He just seems to want to measure radiation around his house, not over a larger area and not coordinated with others. This is basically useless.
I love technology of all kinds. I am also working on a graduate degree in health physics (radiation protection would be the more appropriate title, fyi). Frankly, assuming this isn't someone trolling slashdot, he really shouldn't bother. The fact that he had to ask if alpha radiation was a significant concern tells me he isn't even close to qualified to assess the risks a radioactive source poses.
Think of it this way.. If someone asked you "I want to write my own TV database scraper. What would the best type of programming language to learn be? Will I need a keyboard? Just fyi, I only have a small amount of time, as this isn't my career," what would your response be? The question he asked is on the same level. If you don't immediately recognize that, then you really have no business commenting on the subject. It would be like someone asking for the best statistical thermodynamics textbook, then making it apparent they didn't know basic algebra.
Ignoring for a second the obvious serious lack of knowledge, radiation monitoring equiptment of any quality is expensive and needs calibration. Which requires access to radioactive standard sources. A geiger counter tells you nothing, especially a crappy one. I have a natural uranium deposit not far from my home. A geiger counter would light up like a christmas tree near it. If you didn't understand what what was going on, or even worse, didn't have any understanding past "the needle is moving, oh no!", then the results would be at best worthless and at worst misleading. And in the end someone untrained would have wasted thousands of dollars for no reason.
Believe it or not radiation is a complex and not at all obvious thing. Most people haven't studied it in any significant fashion, in a university or otherwise. In the same way a doctor would never encourage someone to self diagnose, I would never encourage someone to measure radioactive exposure by themseves. It would be irresponsible for me to do so. And excuse all the comparisons, but I occasionally go to public outreach meetings and have become aware that people need things put in terms they understand. Especially smart people. Smart people tend to form an ignorant view, assume they are right, then assume some kind of conspiracy when they are informed they are wrong.
Slashdot is of course on the "pro-nuclear" side
Slashdot has educated people, with backgrounds in science, who understand the issues involved in nuclear processes.
Your implication is that there are two reasonable sides to the argument: pro-nuclear and anti-nuclear. This is akin to saying that there are two sides to the flat earth debate. The only difference is that everyone knows the flat earth people are wrong, but it takes a substantial amount of education to recognize how badly wrong the anti-nuclear crowd generally is.
As for the topic of this thread, the idea of asking for a geiger counter to measure some pool that is probably barely above background (if at all) would be like somebody asking if he needs to buy a set of 11 super-powered turbo fans for his home computer that he uses for email that has been running a little slow lately.. He can buy the fans, and there might be some marginal use to them, but the money would be better spent dealing with real problems.
Yes, I have a background in nuclear physics. No, I don't think it makes me biased, I think it makes me informed.